A mile-long purple line stretches along Northwest Eighth Avenue in Gainesville to remind passersby of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The purple curb represents that life may be taken away, a nod to the purple hearts soldiers receive after they have been injured or killed in war.
Now that curb, dubbed Memorial Mile, may be removed. The Florida Department of Transportation ordered in late June that all pavement art not used for traffic control be taken out or painted over. FDOT is in contact with the city of Gainesville over whether to remove the Memorial Mile.
In August, a similar ordinance enforced by FDOT demanded the city remove the three rainbow crosswalks or lose transportation funding. Eventually, on Aug. 25, Gainesville complied despite the mayor’s chagrin.
Memorial Mile started on Memorial Day weekend in 2007 to honor soldiers across the U.S. who lost their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq. Veterans for Peace set up over 4,000 white coroplast tombstones with each soldier’s names, rank, hometown and date of death.
Throughout the years, the count grew to over 6,000 tombstones. Over 7,000 soldiers died in the wars in total. The mile-long stretch of Northwest Eighth Avenue looked like an official military graveyard, said City Commissioner James Ingle.
“We wanted the public to see the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Scott Camil, the 79-year-old president of Gainesville’s chapter of Veterans for Peace.
The soldiers' loved ones came to the site and left photos, letters and trinkets. Veterans for Peace kept those items, along with the tombstones, and brought them back out each Memorial Day.
Those white tombstones are now preserved at Camil’s house in an air conditioned shed.
In 2021, the same year the final troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan, the group stopped the annual event and made a permanent homage to the soldiers. The city of Gainesville painted the purple line to represent each soldier’s purple heart, in place of the mile where they used to put up the tombstones.
Camil said if the curb gets removed, a member of Veterans for Peace will attend the removal and document the process, adding the photos to the group’s growing archive of pictures and videos of the mile dating back to 2007.
“It is a memorial site. And we’re upset that the governor would shut down part of a memorial site,” Camil said.
Sheila Payne, who now lives in New York, worked on Memorial Mile for years, helping set up the tombstones while the group still displayed them annually. Payne’s husband and his father are veterans, and her father-in-law came down from Seattle each year to help, as well.
The purple line isn’t a distraction, she said, and she wouldn’t consider it dangerous.
“Frankly, it is so ridiculous,” she said.
There is no verdict on if the purple curb violates FDOT laws, said Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward.
Ward is in contact with Veterans for Peace and said there are a lot of dedicated veterans in the community. He said he doesn’t see how honoring veterans by painting a curb is interfering with traffic safety.
“I’m hopeful that they will make a good decision,” Ward said of FDOT.
Contact Teia Williams at twilliams@alligator.org Follow her on X @teia_williams.
Teia is a general assignment reporter for Metro. She is also a second semester journalism transfer student from Daytona State College and served as Editor-in-Chief for In Motion, DSC's student newspaper. When she's not writing, Teia can be found reading, going to concerts, at the beach and talking about her favorite artists.
